As Peter Jackson goes from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth to the battlefields of the First World War, he hopes young people do one thing: ask questions.

The Oscar-winning director’s latest film, They Shall Not Grow Old, utilizes century-old footage of forgotten men from the Great War and breathes stunning new life into their stories in spotless 3D and dazzling colour.

But for many, they might not know they had a relative who took part in the world’s first big military conflict.

“Most people in this world, whether they know it or not, have DNA that is made up of people who fought in this war,” Jackson says in a phone interview from Los Angeles.

“I think a lot of younger people don’t know that their great, great-grandfather or their great, great-uncle was actually a soldier in this war. I hope it inspires them to want to know a little bit more of their family history.”

Jackson got involved after he was asked by Britain’s Imperial War Museum at the premiere of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug in 2013 if he’d be interested in making a documentary to mark the Centenary Anniversary of Armistice Day in 2018.

“They said it could be anything I wanted it to be — I could take any view of the First World War — but the only condition they put on it was that it had to be made up entirely of their original archive film footage. They wanted this film footage to be used in a fresh and original way.”

As he put the finishing touches on the third Hobbit film — The Battle of the Five Armies — Jackson considered the challenge.

And then it dawned on him. What if he and the wizards at his effects house Weta Digital (which did all of the visuals in The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit series) in New Zealand took a stab at cleaning up and colourizing the footage?

“I asked the Imperial War Museum to send me three or four minutes of film. We took a few weeks to play with it and make it look as fresh and vibrant as we could. Several months later, when I was looking at the results, I was amazed. It exceeded anything I could have dreamt.”

The images, once grainy and full of imperfections, are rendered new in bursts of colour that make it seem as if it was shot today.

Using lip readers, Jackson was able to further enhance the experience by recreating dialogue from the mouths of dead soldiers to tell the stories of the First World War in their own words.

Now, as They Shall Not Grow Old makes its way to theatres, Jackson calls the project one of the most rewarding experiences in a career that includes multiple Oscar wins (for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King).

He’s even considering revisiting some of his older, pre-LOTR films to give them a digital clean up.

This image released by Warner Bros. Entertainment shows a scene from the WWI documentary “They Shall Not Grow Old,” directed by Peter Jackson. (Warner Bros. Entertainment)

Following its North American premiere in Hollywood earlier this month, Jackson spoke to the Sun about recreating the First World War, finding his story and remembering your roots.

Was this a bigger challenge than creating Middle-earth in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit?

(laughs) That’s a hard question to answer. I don’t hugely enjoy being on a film set and shooting a movie. That’s a stressful time. To me, the best part is when I’ve finished shooting and I’m in the cutting room and it’s just me and my editor (Jabez Olssen). I was relying on the footage from a hundred years ago that cameramen on the Western Front risked their lives to shoot. I was able to skip the part I don’t like and go straight into the cutting room and start piecing together the story from the footage and the sounds I had. I have never done that before in my life.

They Shall Not Grow Old shows how young men from Britain were eager to fight this war. But it also shows them in the trenches, deep in battle. How did you come up with your narrative thread?

I ultimately got over 100 hours of First World War film. I didn’t want to impose what the idea was until I could see all the footage that was available. Watching it though, the humanity of these soldiers came to life so clearly. After that, it became clear to me that the only voices we should hear are the men that were there.

This image released by Warner Bros. Entertainment shows a scene from the WWI documentary “They Shall Not Grow Old,” directed by Peter Jackson. (Warner Bros. Entertainment)

Lip readers helped recreate some of the dialogue, but there are other voices we hear in the film. Who are they?

I asked the museum and the BBC to send me any interviews they conducted with veterans in the 1960s and ’70s … They had over 600 hours of audio interviews they had done mostly for a special called The Great War. They dug into their archives and found all these tapes that had never been heard before. We listened to all that audio material and looked at all the film and the story found its own shape.

Do you think films like these are necessary for young people to see?

I don’t know what was necessary about the First World War … I’ll leave that to the historians. But having made the film, what I hope will happen is that people today will connect with their family … There will be stories that your grandparents may never have talked about with you, but I’m hoping young people will be inspired to ask their elderly relatives if you had any family members who were in this war. These stories are all going to get lost in another 15 or 20 years when those people are gone. After this, you’re never going to hear these stories and you’re never going to know.

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